WASHINGTON  Conversations intercepted the day before
Sept. 11 caught al-Qaeda operatives boasting in Arabic, "The match begins tomorrow"
and "Tomorrow is Zero Hour." But U.S. intelligence didn't translate them until
Sept. 12, congressional and administration sources disclosed Wednesday. The
failure of the National Security Agency to translate the conversations until
the day after the terrorist attacks became the focus of an eight-hour closed
hearing on Capitol Hill. Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, head of the NSA,
and CIA Director George Tenet told a House-Senate investigative committee that
the intercepted communications were too vague to be of use, according to officials
familiar with their testimony.

Hayden told the lawmakers the intercepts
captured al-Qaeda members communicating with allies in Saudi Arabia, according
to one of the officials.

The NSA viewed the intercepts as "background chatter" rather
than clear-cut intelligence that would have enabled counterterrorism experts
to thwart the attacks or alert possible targets, the officials said. Despite
at times intense questioning of Hayden, Tenet and FBI Director Robert Mueller,
some lawmakers appeared ready to accept that explanation.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a critic of the CIA and FBI,
downplayed the significance of the intercepts. "The information collected was
oblique. It was not specific," Durbin said in an interview. "It was a characterization
of something about to happen. That, by itself, doesn't point to the World Trade
Center attack."

But Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, ranking Republican
on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said a variety of intelligence information
could have warned of the impending attacks. "If brought together to a central
place to people with great analytic ability, these would have provided more
than an outline" of coming attacks, he said.

The NSA uses spy satellites and sophisticated antennae
to collect, decode and translate telephone, computer, radio and other communications
abroad. Officials did not disclose the type of communication intercepted Sept.
10.

Before Sept. 11, the NSA had lacked the personnel to instantly
translate and analyze the high volume of information it collects each day from
around the world, according to intelligence officials and lawmakers. Congress
has approved higher spending to expand the NSA's translation and analysis shop.

The NSA's failure to immediately translate intercepts of
al-Qaeda operatives discussing coming attacks just before Sept. 11 was first
reported by USA TODAY two weeks ago.

Disclosure of the exact words, first reported Wednesday
by CNN, angered some lawmakers. The NSA worries that leaks about its intercepts
might tip off terrorists that their supposedly secure communications have been
compromised and prompt them to communicate by other means.

Concerns about further disclosures of classified materials
might lead to a delay in the committee's first public hearings, scheduled to
start next week.